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80 heavy-hitting Conservative leaders and voices met together in Alexandria, VA, on Wednesday, 17 February 2010, to sign a new Conservative Manifesto named “The Mount Vernon Statement”. According to their own website, this statement is, “a declaration of leadership for a new generation of conservatives that defines the principles, values and beliefs of the conservative movement.”

Needless to say, this event has lit up the blogosphere on both sides of the fence, and Internet news outlets. The usual suspects in Conservative-bashing chimed in yesterday, seeking to turn this meeting into just another liberal talking point. (Someone call Keith Olbermann and put some copy in front of him!) Even well-known Conservative pundits have expressed some skepticism. CPAC has also begun, and this statement will feed directly into the spirit of change and new beginnings we so desperately need right now as a Nation.

While this new manifesto may not be perfect, it is indeed a great starting point for modern-day Conservatives to return to a simpler time. A time of smaller Federal government. A time of less Federal government obtrusiveness. Given the expansion of said government we have all seen beginning with Bush and continuing effortlessly into Obama’s Rule, having folks remember that we are not designed as a Nation to have a huge government is not necessarily a bad thing. I can only hope that non-Conservatives or folks on-the-fence will read this statement and be propelled into deeper thought about what they really want their Federal government to do and be.

The Mount Vernon Statement opens with these words:

We recommit ourselves to the ideas of the American Founding. Through the Constitution, the Founders created an enduring framework of limited government based on the rule of law. They sought to secure national independence, provide for economic opportunity, establish true religious liberty and maintain a flourishing society of republican self-government.
These principles define us as a country and inspire us as a people. They are responsible for a prosperous, just nation unlike any other in the world. They are our highest achievements, serving not only as powerful beacons to all who strive for freedom and seek self-government, but as warnings to tyrants and despots everywhere.

A Nation could easily rebuild itself on the back of this kind of thought.

Will this statement make any difference? Will this statement rally the Conservative troops, both in and outside of DC, and mark the beginning of a return to a Conservative government? Time will tell. CPAC started today, as I mentioned before, and Right Pundits will be covering this event for your informative purposes. Expect this Mount Vernon Statement to influence and shape many of the speeches that will be spoken there. Perhaps this statement and its being talked about and reported upon will bridge the gap between today and November 2010, giving American voters the resolve they need to do the right thing.

Absolutely! Listen, my personal expression and relationship with Jesus is not a Federal issue, and should never become one. I choose to worship Him and that’s that.

However, having a Nativity scene in front of a firehouse or a sheriff’s office is hardly an offense to The Constitution. The Constitution prohibits an “establishment” of a national religion, ie, if Obama came onto he airwaves and said, “Starting today, Islam is now the official religion of the United States. So, we are now all Muslims.” Having a “religiously themed” display in courthouses or federal offices is not establishing a government-mandated religion. It is simply freedom of expression.

The government should never dabble into such affairs, unless, say for example, my religion teaches me to kill people. This would be bad.

“The Mount Vernon Statement reads like a document stuck in the Sixties: ‘America’s principles have been undermined and redefined in our culture, our universities and our politics.’ There is not the slightest hint or acknowledgement that conservatives had any part in this undermining or redefining. Nothing about people posing as conservatives being responsible for a brutal empire that straddles the world, the bankrupting of the nation to pay for this empire, the justification of torture at home and abroad, an imperial presidency, the evisceration of the Tenth Amendment, you name it. Apparently only liberals have committed these crimes against the spirit and the letter of the Constitution.”

Very good analysis. If Republicans are truly intent on fixing this country, they absolutely need to start by cleaning their own house.

5

Rhayader Says:
February 18th, 2010 at 8:59 am

Social and moral issues should be left to the will of the people.

Eh, sort of. They should be left to the will of the people, except in cases where the will of the people infringes on the Constitutional rights of individuals. In cases like that, majority rule is not valid. The Constitution establishes democracy as a way to protect freedom, not the other way around. In cases of conflict between the two, personal freedom takes Constitutional priority over majority rule.

At least that’s the way it was written. The way it’s actually practiced? Yeah, not so much.

The Mount Vernon “Statement” should not be confused with the Mount Vernon Compact — a 1785 meeting hosted by George Washington of delegates from Maryland and Virginia that resulted in the shared sovereignty of the Potomac River. At that time, there was no federal jurisdiction to resolve such interstate disputes — and the Founding Fathers could only rely on this type of ad hoc effort. The Mount Vernon Compact was followed by the 1786 Annapolis Convention on interstate trade, which was followed in 1787 by the Philadelphia Convention drafting the Constitution’s strong federal system of government.

The founders were well aware of the problems caused by too many local, parochial interests subverting the progress of this nation’s future. Sadly, today’s “patriots” at Mount Vernon have no grasp of the historical context of our founding documents. Nor have they seemed to notice that times have changed. Robert E. Lee went to war against the federal government in defense of “his country”, i.e., Virginia. Few Americans would consider their state of residence to be their country today — we view ourselves as Americans because Lee’s forces were defeated. We bury our most honored war dead in his backyard to drive that point home.

In a global economy very few economic issues are purely intrastate. I’m thankful that there are federal meat inspectors, federal regulation of airline safety, and other trappings of “Big Government”. I’m not sure I’d go as far as Justices Scalia and Thomas in declaring that the growth of marijuana in one’s home for one’s personal use constitutes interstate commerce, but I’ll defer to their learned experience and bedrock conservative principles in coming to that conclusion.

As the Mount Vernon Statement avers: conservatives “honor the central place of individual liberty in American
politics and life.” Except if one wants to smoke a homegrown doobie. Conservatives who honored individual liberty raised nary a wimper on warrentless wiretaps or the passage and reauthorization of the Patriot Act, etc. What a crock of road apples.